Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

[UPDATED: Florida Democratic Party responds to this report. See bottom of article for details.]

A Democratic candidate running in a contested primary for the U.S. House seat representing Florida's 24th Congressional District has filed an official complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), alleging that his opponent has been making illegal and deceptive campaign calls from within the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) offices, on party phone lines.

In a statement sent to The BRAD BLOG blasting his opponent, Clint Curtis described the tactics being used by the Suzanne Kosmas campaign as "the worst example of Rovian dirty tricks."

Curtis, a Florida computer programmer turned well-known vote-rigging/anti-corruption whistleblower (see BRAD BLOG's years-long coverage of Curtis here) has filed a complaint charging that paid campaign staffers for his opponent in the August 26th Democratic Primary, former state Rep. Kosmas, "have been contacting Democratic primary election voters and fraudulently identifying themselves as calling on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party," according to the campaign's press release.

"The callers then go on to solicit votes for Kosmas in the Aug. 26 Democratic primary," the Curtis camp alleges.

The press release is posted in full at the end of this article, with a link to download the complete FEC complaint. Also at the end of the article is the full text of an email sent to Curtis and campaign manager Jerry Halberg, from a Curtis campaign staffer who also serves as a local Florida precinct captain. The precinct captain claims to have received one of the deceptive phone calls.

The email notes that the Caller ID recorded showed the call as having come from "KOSMAS FOR CONG" with the phone number 407-365-7808. A call made by The BRAD BLOG to that number this afternoon, was answered by someone identifying the number as belonging to "The Campaign for Florida of the Florida Democratic Party."

The Curtis campaign press release, issued yesterday, details the main points of Curtis' complaint to the FEC:

* Kosmas and her committee knowingly misled the democratic primary election voters as to the origination of her telephonic communications and utilized state Democratic Party offices and telephone equipment for her federal campaign.

* The Kosmas campaign claimed the state offices, which are leased by the Florida State Democratic Party, as her campaign offices in public communications with Democratic voters.

* She knowingly led the voters to believe that the communication asking for support in the primary was from the Florida Democratic Party when in fact it was from paid staffers.

"The unlawful calls continued even after the Kosmas campaign was notified of the problem," the release continues, with Curtis adding, "Her campaign was given the opportunity to rectify the violations prior to the submission of FEC charges but apparently chose not to."

The Curtis campaign says photos taken of the Democratic Party offices in Oviedo reveal how the evidence of FDP support for Kosmas was "scrubbed" after they complained. Photos said to have been taken on July 31, before Curtis complained to both the FDP and the Kosmas camp, show campaign signs for Kosmas plastered throughout the local Democratic Party facility. After the initial complaints on Aug 3rd, as the following photos purport to show, the signs were removed...

[UPDATE: Eric Jotkoff, Communications Director for the Florida Democratic Party, contacted us after hearing about this story. Though he didn't read it, and though Curtis has not accused the FDP of wrong-doing, Jotkoff denies any wrong-doing by the FDP and "strenuously object to all of the so-called information in this story." Details of our testy phone call with Jotkoff, and his responses to Curtis' allegations on behalf of the state party, are posted as an update at the bottom of this article.]

Curtis has criticized Kosmas as being a wealthy-millionaire, hand-selected by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), with similar ethics concerns to the presumptive Republican nominee, Rep. Tom Feeney. In additions to allegations of a Feeney's involvement in an electronic vote-rigging conspiracy, as Curtis testified under oath and on video before members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (on which Feeney now sits) in 2005, the not-yet-indicted Republican Congresman is currently under FBI investigation concerning his relationship with jailed GOP super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. For three years running now, Feeney has made it onto a list of "Most Corrupt" in Congress, as compiled by a D.C. ethics watchdog organization.

In a story first broken by The BRAD BLOG in late 2004, and covered here ever since, Curtis accused Feeney of asking him to create a vote-rigging software prototype when both men worked for an Oviedo, Florida software firm. At the time, Curtis was a fellow Republican, and Feeney worked as the company's registered lobbyist and general counsel, even as he served as the speaker of the Florida House. He was also Jeb Bush's former running mate for Governor in 1998.

Curtis has alleged Kosmas has ethical issues that will make it difficult to take Feeney on in the general election on those matters, and that the deceptive phone calls only make matters worse.

"If we can't trust her to honestly represent herself correctly on the telephone, can we trust her to represent the citizens of the district in Congress?," Curtis asks in the campaign release.

"The Democratic Party does not make endorsements in the primary. Our party is not a handful of elitists, but rather a party of the people. We determine our candidates in our primaries. What has occurred is just another case of a political millionaire acting as if she is above the law and has no problem in attempting to deceive voters," the release quotes Curtis as adding.

In an April BRAD BLOG interview with Curtis, he noted his displeasure with the DCCC's decision to back Kosmas, despite his having been a loyal Democrat who'd made an impressive run --- also with no DCCC support --- against the powerful Feeney back in 2006. The party, he charged, was not happy after he told them during an interview in Washington D.C. earlier this year, that, should be be elected, he'd place his constituents' desires ahead of requests to vote any particular way by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In a comment sent to The BRAD BLOG today he echoed that sentiment and charged that Kosmas was using a tactic worthy of Karl Rove in order to deceive voters.

"People really are fed up with the whole Pelosi/Democrat-In-Name-Only thing," said Curtis. "I personally have little tolerance for fake Democrats anymore, and Kosmas' playbook here is the worst example of Rovian dirty tricks."

"We need to reject this not just in FL-24 but across the board and oust these damn Neocon enablers once and for all," he added.

Calls made by The BRAD BLOG to both the Kosmas campaign office and her campaign manager Paul Dunne, requesting comment this afternoon, were not immediately returned.

Curtis' legal complaint alleges that Kosmas' campaign staffers have been contacting Democratic primary election voters and fraudulently identifying themselves as calling on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party. The callers then go on to solicit votes for Kosmas in the Aug. 26 Democratic primary.

The official paperwork - signed, notarized and submitted in triplicate - was mailed to the Federal Elections Commission in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 6.

The Curtis campaign plans to contact voters to let them know about the fraudulent calls. Voters who receive such calls are asked to contact the campaign at www.ClintCurtis.com.

Curtis' complaint states that:

* Kosmas and her committee knowingly misled the democratic primary election voters as to the origination of her telephonic communications and utilized state Democratic Party offices and telephone equipment for her federal campaign.

* The Kosmas campaign claimed the state offices, which are leased by the Florida State Democratic Party, as her campaign offices in public communications with Democratic voters.

* She knowingly led the voters to believe that the communication asking for support in the primary was from the Florida Democratic Party when in fact it was from paid staffers.

The unlawful calls continued even after the Kosmas campaign was notified of the problem. "Her campaign was given the opportunity to rectify the violations prior to the submission of FEC charges," Curtis said, "but apparently chose not to. If we can't trust her to honestly represent herself correctly on the telephone, can we trust her to represent the citizens of the district in Congress?"

Curtis states that, "The Democratic Party does not make endorsements in the primary. Our party is not a handful of elitists, but rather a party of the people. We determine our candidates in our primaries. What has occurred is just another case of a political millionaire acting as if she is above the law and has no problem in attempting to deceive voters."

The violations took place in multiple locations throughout District 24, including offices in New Smyrna Beach, Oviedo and Titusville.

Curtis is facing Kosmas in the Aug. 26 Democratic primary. The winner will go up against the winner of the Republican primary and Independent candidate Gaurav "Garv" Bhola this November.

UPDATE 7:29pm PT: We've just gotten off of a testy phone call with Eric Jotkoff, the Communications Director for the Florida Democratic Party. We called him nine minutes after receiving the following email:

Brad,

I am the communications director for the florida democratic party.

I just found out that you posted on your blog false allegations of illegal activites. [sic]

I would hope that you would remove the post until you gave the fdp a chance to respond.

Please call me on my cell phone at [redacted for privacy].

Eric

---
Eric Jotkoff
Florida Democratic Party

While Jotkoff admitted on the call that he has not actually read the article posted above, he maintains that "the Florida Democratic Party strenuously objects to all of the so-called information in this story." He says Curtis' complaints are "frivolous" and "completely untrue" and that the FDP "patently denies these false charges by the Curtis campaign."

"The charges are unfounded," Jotkoff told us. "What Mr. Curtis was complaining about, the Florida Democratic Party has offices there, doing general activities, preparing to aggressively take on Tom Feeney who, as I'm sure you know, is one of the most corrupt members of Congress."

Jotkoff admits, however, that the signs for Kosmas were posted at the FDP offices in Oviedo. He says it's because her campaign requested they do so.

"I believe we had a few signs up. Just like we would have signs up for any Democrats running in our office," he said. But when we asked if they had any signs up for Curtis he responded: "I don't believe Clint Curtis asked us to put signs up. At this point, we've decided to take all of the signs down because of the allegations."

He was unable to identify who, at the Kosmas campaign, had made the request to put up signs, though he says he "know[s] that the Kosmas campaign requested the posters be put up."

The photos above (and others that we have) reveal that there were more than just "a few signs" posted for Kosmas at the FDP Oviedo offices. "Because there are signs in the window, it doesn't mean we're getting involved in the campaign," he snapped, before adding "even if everything alleged in Mr. Curtis' complaint were true, which they're not, it would be 100% legal to do everything there."

Curtis has not charged the FDP with wrongdoing, only the Kosmas campaign, yet Jotkoff took great offense to our story (unread by him as it was) nonetheless. The Kosmas campaign has still not returned either of the two phone calls we made to them seeking comment earlier today.

As to the email alleging that calls were made on behalf of Kosmas, from an FDP phone line ID'd as "KOSMAS FOR CONG," Jotkoff had no explanation. "We have our own offices and we're calling and recruiting volunteers. Suzanne Kosmas' campaign is not working out of them, not using them and is not involved in that," he claimed.

When asked if it would be a lie then to say that callers from FDP were calling on behalf of Kosmas, or vice versa, he said, "There may have been one or two calls, from one or two staffers, and they were reprimanded. Possibly." When I repeated that back to him he said he didn't know if that happened, but sometimes callers "go off script," which, he says, are carefully written. He suggests that perhaps that's what happened in the phone call described in the email posted above, though he couldn't explain the confusion about the phone number being ID'd as coming from "KOSMAS FOR CONG."

After a long call in which Jotkoff, the FDP Communications Director, berated "bloggers" like us for irresponsibly running allegations --- and charges filed with the FEC --- made by a candidate and a campaign staffer, he promised he'd get back to us over the weekend with information showing the charges to be untrue.

One example we suggested: Phone bills for the FDP phone number 407-365-7808, showing that the line was never ID'd as "KOSMAS FOR CONG". On that point, Jotkoff berated us for running "anonymous allegations from a Clint Curtis staffer who has a financial stake in the race." The allegation, however, was not anonymous, even though we removed the name of the emailer for privacy, as we explained to him several times. The report and the email both identify the emailer as a member of Curtis' staff.

The email says, at one point [emphasis added]: "I am supporting Clint Curtis and am on his campaign staff."

Jotkoff demanded to know the name of the emailer, multiple times, but could not explain how that answered to the substance of the charges. He was unable to explain what difference the name would make, even if that name was Clint Curtis (which it's not) and would only repeat that the charges were "frivolous and completely untrue."

After a number of other obnoxious comments, which we'll do Jotkoff the favor of not repeating here, and more queries as to whether we'd "remove the story" ("No, we would do no such things, we don't scrub stories here, but we'd be happy to post any evidence he has showing the allegations to be untrue," we told him in response) well...let's just say, given the way he dealt with a member of the media who has likely written more words than any other person in the world about the corruption of the filthy Tom Feeney, the FDP might want to revisit who it is they've put in charge of communications to the media. We'll look forward to Jotkoff's promised exculpatory evidence and hope he's a bit more polite --- and smart --- the next time we talk to him. Even though we're just "a blog."

Clint Curtis is exactly the kind of person we need in congress. Please show him some love. It's true progressives like Clint Curtis that might, just might, if put into office, be able to turn this nation around.

A little off topic but Cindy Sheehan has qualified to be on the ballot. Her chances of winning probably aren't that high but it will be nice to see her give Pelosi a run for her money. Cindy says she will make sure Pelosi is well versed in all of the bush crimes by the end of the campaign.

Who brought Clint Curtis to the BradBlog? Was that that a convicted bomber named Brett Kimberlin?

The problem is, Curtis is no Democrat nor a progressive. He is hyping NASA on his website. He's hawking the same tired defense industry rubbish. He may be against the war, but whoop de doo, so is Howard Stern after the fact.

So why isn't the Brett Kimberlin story being told? Why did Larisa of RawStory lie about him being exonerated? How much money did he get for being put in solitary confinement for the Quayle/reefer scandal? Was it enough to bankroll finds like Clint Curtis along with RawStory and BradBlog?

People are trying to make this guy out to be some kind of victim, in fact, an ex-political prisoner. It looks like he got lucky with a parole grandfather clause, or he'd still be in jail for actions which led to a person's death. That's who it seems started all this Raw Story and BradBlog zeitgeist. At least that's what an L.A. Steele Show says.

You're not fooling the astute readers. They'll find out about Kimberlin.

We Democrats in Florida are finding out that our party cares nothing about the voters but everything about the money. They are NOT representing the constituent's intent. First, our votes do not matter to the DNC, now that they have replaced the delegates that would have pledged to Clinton at the convention, they have agreed to count our delegates in full during the Denver show. Follow the money. Brad, you know we only moved our primary because it was attached to a bill providing a paper trail of our votes, yet we are being punished by our own party for demanding accountability.

So, what does this tell us about the Democratic Party? Get rid of the true patriots in the primary so the Republicans don't have to Cynthia McKinney). I'll bet Kosmas has no history of having any beef with e-vote machines. If that's true, wouldn't that be fishy? Then e-vote machines aren't brought up in any debates when the Dem nominee goes against the Republican! Nip it in the bud!

tedeger, a pair of blue dogs snarling at each other? you can't be serious. if curtis was a blue dog the party wouldn't have selected kosmas and tried to kick curtis to the curb. it's precisely because curtis is his own man and refuses to bow down to pelosi and rahm emmanuel that this situation exists today. curtis is about as progressive as it gets. he's PDA-endorsed, for crying out loud. no offense but do some research, amigo.

Seriously, Empy, your vote counts a lot here. Voting for Kosmas is no better than voting for Feeney. Please don't waste a vote on someone simply because they call themselves a Democrat. The whole reason everything is as bad as it's gotten is because we have a congress full of these bastards already. You say Curtis doesn't have much chance, but based on the last elections UNofficial numbers, Curtis may well have won. This time out we have a paper trail. So make no mistake--Curtis CAN win. But not if folks like yourself, with all due respect, throw in the towel based on perceptions of who can win. Does that mean all the folks supporting Cindy Sheehan should give up and support Pelosi? She IS the problem. No difference here.

People generally think of her as a joke. She struts into a meeting like a queen and then leaves as quickly as she can. It is not hard to see that she thinks of the people as just something she stepped in. At several meetings I have attended, people are laughing at her and her snotty act.

When this race first started I was for her because she was a women. Now it would be impossible to ever vote for her because as Democrats we have to stand up for honesty. Are all our words about holding Bush accountable just lies we tell ourselves because we do not like his politics? Are Democrats just as bad as the Republicans we have chastised for years?

I will not vote for Feeney but if she is the only other choice I will skip that race. It is a disservice to Obama to have someone like her on the ticket.

As a Realtor she should have known better than make false calls. Everyone working in the SE Volusia Clubs office knows that she made them.

I live a quarter mile from that office, and I noticed as soon as it opened. I thought it was a Kosmas campaign office. I went inside and spoke with a guy inside. The first thing I asked, was "Why should I vote for Susanne Kosmas over Clint Curtis?" The guy inside spent a couple of minutes giving me a very weak argument about liking her "vision for the community" better. I voiced my strong disagreement, and cited many reasons for supporting Curtis. I was in there about ten minutes, and though he clearly tried, he was unsuccessful in convincing me to support Kosmas. I did notice the signs come down a few days ago, and i was puzzled as to why, though I was really glad about it. Hearing that this office is not a Kosmas campaign headquarters and is actually a Democratic Party office makes me feel like I want to switch back to the Green Party. I think I will as soon as i vote for Clint next week.

If anybody related to the actual ficticious phone calls wants to go after Kosmas Realestate license can do so At this Link https://www.myfloridalic.../entercomplaint.asp?SID=
Any person working for her and under her is the responsibility of the licencee as FSS 475. To the DBPR it makes no difference who did what, those under her are her responsibility. Missprepresentation of facts, misleading or causing others to mispresent the facts is punishable by the revocation of license.

yeah maybe the FDP directors can't recall their solicitation of pre-preimary endorsements from Senator Bill Nelso, Jim Davis and Alex Sink, just to name a few. Maybe they can't recall the August 2007 convention when Debbie Wassername took the stage and sung the virtues of Kosmas??? Give it arest guys - you wen to far and now the walls are closing in. I live in the district and will bevoting for Curtis and all of my friends and family will get an e-mail with this link in it. What the FDP has done to deny the democratic voters in this district their right to chose the candidate they want to go againt Feeney is deplorabe.

I remember the first time I caught some local Democrats engaging in dirty campaign tricks. Their excuse was that they had to because the Republicans did it. Right. By the time I was four years old my parents wouldn't let me get away with an excuse like that. I can still hear their words echo in my ears more than six decades later: "If the other kids jumped off the roof, does that mean you'd have to jump off the roof too?"

Clint was a Republican until their attempted to embroil him in their dirty tricks. So he became a Democrat and now he's learning that the Democrats do the same thing. Welcome to reality, Clint!

But he should have learned that lesson a while back. Didn't he notice when he won his previous race and collected the evidence that he'd won, that the Democrats didn't look at his evidence or that of several other Democratic candidates who'd had their elections stolen, because Pelosi wanted to install more Republicans to help keep impeachment off the table and support the wars?

I was a Democraat once. And then a Green for a few years. And then an anarchist. And eventually I arrived, as everyone with a conscience must, at situational ethics rather than ideologies.

So now I don't care about what parties people belong to or how good, decent, and principled they are. If they know that our elections are 100% faith-based and cannot be secured from fraud, which happens to be a fact, and they know that there is no way to prevent unelected candidates from taking office and carrying out unpopular agendas, or to remove them from office for doing so, they should know better than to run for office or vote in a totally corrupt system.

What good can a Dennis Kucinich, a Clint Curtis, a Cindy Sheehan, and a handful of other good people do if they are elected to a totally corrupt Congress that is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military-industrial complex and the big multinational corporations? Give after hours speeches to empty rooms? Introduce bills that will never make it out of committee?

Brad had it right when he signed the Creekside Declaration and said that all actions should be measured against the goal of establishing a citizen-owned transparent participatory democracy. Voting in faith-based elections doesn't further than goal. Getting elected to a corrupt Congress doesn't further that goal. The way to reach that goal is to educate people about what is wrong, what needs to be changed, and to encourage them to stop doing things in way that have been proven not to work, and start working towards real democracy.

You can't get honest elections by continuing to show your wilingness to vote in faith-based elections. If you'll settle for less, nobody is going to offer you anything better. You have to take a stand and say that you won't vote until and unless you can be absolutely certain that your vote will count and be counted accurately. There are third-world countries that have honest elections, so we have no excuse.

The Democratic Party doesn't really want your vote. It says it does but in 2000 and 2004 the Democratic candidates conceded BEFORE the votes were counted. It wouldn't have mattered if they had had 100% of the popular vote, since they didn't bother to count the votes before conceding. Why would anyone vote for or want to be on the ticket of a party that doesn't care about our votes?

Nothing has changed. You can monitor, observe, video, document, investigate, and analyze the theft of the 2008 election all you want, but you can't stop it from being stolen. It's a bad gamble in a rigged game --- why would anyone want to risk their country's future on a bet like that?

I have nothing but respect and admiration for Clint and Cindy. I know they are going to keep right on fighting and learning, no matter how badly they may be wounded in the fight or disillusioned in the learning process. They're brilliant, they're committed, and they exemplify the word courage. I only wish there was some sort of shortcut so that I could bring them up to speed without them having to knock their heads against the same walls I've knocked mine against for so many years.

But there is no shortcut. One of the things that Richard Hayes Phillips does, in addition to investigating election fraud, is blaze trails for the Forest Service. Yet when I tried to tell him that it didn't matter to the country if he could be sure that his vote counted, since more than 80% of the vote is counted in ways that are open to undetectable manipulation, and that people who oppose wars of aggression, don't vote in elections where the only candidates who have a chance of winning are committed to wars of aggression and where the wars of aggression have already been pre-funded so that they will continue no matter who wins, he actually covered his ears with his hands so that he wouldn't have to listen.

That's a shame because trailblazing skills are exactly what are needed to establish a true democracy. Analying the mistakes of the past isn't going to bring about change. I bought and enjoyed his book about the stolen 2004 election and I've been trying for a couple of years now to pre-order his book about the theft of the 2008 election, but he isn't ready to admit that the reason he's encouraging people to vote in easily-stolen elections is so that he can write one.

Education is key but while it is necessary, it is not sufficient. It isn't enough to know that the last two times you drove drunk you crashed your car, spent a long time in the hospital, a lot of money on repairs, and barely escaped losing your driver's license. You have to be able to know that and ALSO be able to stop driving drunk. Knowing the facts is only the first step. The second step is to be able to recognize your mistakes, learn from them, and stop repeating them.

Remember several pro-Israeli PACS gave $$$ to "Hackin'" Hank Johnson against Cynthia McKinney in the suspicious Dem primary? And McKinney quit the Dems? Hmmm...what interest did Israeli PACS have in a mostly black district?

Kosmas spent 8 years in the Florida Legislature and never passed a single piece of meaningful legislation...yawn...just what we need...another warm chair up there! At least Clint will give Feeney a fight! She is a horrible debater and as dumb as a stump. I live in the district and Clint is the only option!!!
Emma